Username: When making a new account in a game, forum, or other venue, I tend to sit down and make a list of quirky titles to choose from. Tartarus Sauce won for TTA. At first, I thought of the word "sauce," and figured that having the word sauce in there is always a good bet when creating a username, but then I asked myself what kind of sauce I wanted to be. I instantaneously thought of tartar, but then went one better and turned it into Tartarus from the Greek mythology. This made it so that the first part of my name was related to the main theme of the forum ([dissing] religion) and the second part of my name was sauce, and what isn't there to like about sauce? To top it all off, when you read my name, images of tartar sauce are conjured in your mind (although I don't actually care for tartar sauce myself).

Avatar: I ADORE kitties. Nuff' said.

Title: See above.

Sig: Meh, as true as it may be, it doesn't really present the wit I desire. A placeholder phrase until I can remember one of my more favorite aphorisms.

(09-12-2012 02:56 AM)Vera Wrote: I don't owe you or no one no splanations'

So you cannot even make up a backstory for yourself?

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

Many moons ago, after completing my graduate work, I decided I didn't want an academic career after all but would instead make my mark in the business world. So I began answering ads and sending my resume around, convinced that every company I contacted would fight to have me. Turns out that wasn't quite accurate. For some reason, the hiring authorities seemed more interested in how many finance and accounting classes I had taken (namely, none) than in what I could tell them about leakage to the right of the verb in colloquial Persian syntax. (For the record, I eventually took a year of accounting and did well.)

I floundered for a while until one day I came across an ad in the local paper that seemed to fit me to a T. It was for an in-house advertising agency, and believe it or not they were looking for people with a four-year college degree (I had a helluva lot more than that), good transcripts, and high scores on the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test, taken in high school)! I was all of that in spades! So I phoned and was immediately invited to come in for an interview. It went well and I was hired on the spot. So began my 10-year sojourn in a truly bizarre company, originally a manufacturer and distributor of low-end electronics destined for the premium incentive industry, later branching out into cheap fur coats, 3-D cameras, knock-off jewelry, and vitamins. (I told you it was bizarre.) I started in bookkeeping, rose to Strategic Planner, and eventually became a VP. Not something I'm particularly proud of, but I did learn a thing or two about business, which served me well later on.

The founder and CEO of the company was a piece of work: bright, affable, hugely narcissistic, somewhat paranoid, highly manipulative. According to company mythology, he had been first in his class at a major university, got into the most prestigious law school in the country, and dropped out after the first year, along with his business partner, to make their first million selling uncut diamonds. When he started the corporation I joined, he decided he would surround himself exclusively with people he considered to be worthy of his company (in both senses of the word). Hence the academic requirements. Mind you, those requirements held for every single position in the company, including truck drivers and fork-lift operators! (I suspect this was illegal, but we were never called on it. The result, as you can imagine, was a company whose personnel did not exactly reflect the demographics of the surrounding community. Whether this was the real reason behind the boss's outlandish requirements is hard to say.) The work for us "higher ups" was demeaning: the boss was the ultimate micro-manager, looking over everyone's shoulder no matter how trivial the task and giving no one any real responsibility. (I recall a discussion with him about whether the staple in the upper left-hand corner of a document should be horizontal or vertical.) The good thing, however, is that the crazy hiring policy resulted in a really interesting collection of misfits like me working for this guy, some of whom were quite wonderful people who have since become my life-long friends.

Bear with me . . . I'm finally getting to the point.

One day it was my turn in the barrel--my turn to field the phone calls of job seekers who had seen our ad and were interested in a position with us. As you can imagine, we all dreaded that task. It felt ridiculous to ask middle-aged people who were looking to drive a truck or be a receptionist for their SAT scores from high school days, and we did so apologetically and with great embarrassment. Anyway, I got a call from a woman who was applying for a job with us--maybe file clerk, maybe warehouse stocker, I forget. From her speech, I pegged her as a middle-aged African American woman, bright and sharp but probably without much higher education--and, as it turned out, definitely without the academic credentials we required.

The end of the conversation went something like this:

HER: So you tellin' me that every one of you has a college degree?

ME: Well, yes, that's right.

HER: And these fancy test scores?

ME: Um . . . yes.

HER: Even the truck drivers?

ME: Yes, that's right.

[Pause]

HER: So what you sayin' is, you a buncha educated fools.

Man did she get that right! Afterwards a group of us had buttons made up that said "Educated Fool" and wore them around the office whenever the boss wasn't in sight.

Religious disputes are like arguments in a madhouse over which inmate really is Napoleon.

"Regarded by many people in southeast Asia as the 'king of fruits', the durian is distinctive for its large size, stomach-churning odour, and formidable thorn-covered husk. . . .The edible flesh emits a distinctive odour that is strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as pleasantly fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and revolting. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds, rotten onions, turpentine, and gym socks. The odour has led to the fruit's banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in southeast Asia."

But it is delicious! (Right, DLJ?)

Religious disputes are like arguments in a madhouse over which inmate really is Napoleon.